An 'Ice-Creams' Spring card for Tando Creative

Morning all! At first a warm thank you to all my friends and followers from overseas for all the visits and lovely comments on my two last makes... so much appreciated, really. Also a warm welcome to my new followers. I try always to visit you also as much as possible, but sometimes I just do not have enough time for that in a day (as everyone). But as soon as I have a moment, I really enjoy stopping by your blogs. I'd like to take this opportunity to tell you that I'm going in Paris next week to Version Scrap, so happy to be able to go this year again and see some of my best crafty friends yippee!... So I will be away from Craftyblogland during a few days, I will try to catch up later what I've missed.

Today, I'm sharing with you a very funny piece, a double card inspired by the spring and sunny weather we have had throughout this month here in France. My card opens on a frame of...ice creams. Yum!... :) On the front panel we have four old ladies who are eyeing through the opening of the ice cream man tee-hee...:D I used a humorous stamp by Art Impressions and old patterned papers that make me think to spring and sweets!

On the front panel, I had fun with my Ink Splatters mask to create festive and colorful splatters, looking like fireworks... With a small foam pad I covered the holes with white paint first and then colored them using watercolor Derwent Inktense pencils and a water brush. I also used the Burning Rubber mask in the same way, to create a ground for my ladies.

My ladies are stamped on smooth stamping paper and heat embossed with fine black powder before fussy cut. Derwent Inktense pencils were also used to colour all my images, heat embossed in Clear at the end and glued in place with Glossy Accents.

At top of the left side I have added a bunting strip from my Bunting Small Scalloped pack of 4. It was quickly painted with acrylic yellow-orange paints (I used translucent PA paints: Zesty Zinc + Pumpkin Soup) and also put a bit of glitter stickles in lime green on the edges. I then stamped the word 'spring'. I used my new Stitches Group mask to draw an irregular border line with Olive distress marker and outlined the edges with a brown pen.

And here are the ice creams in big size haha!!! To fit to the theme this week, I glued them on a small board with rounded edges from my pack of Mixed Media Boards. The size of mine is 80 mm x 116 mm, but they exist in two sizes. It's a great product, we can do and imagine many things with it!

To decorate my frame and my ice creams, here are my steps:

For the frame, I first gesso-ed it (and also the ice creams elements) slightly. Once dry, I reused my Ink Splatters mask and coated the board with opaque yellow saffron paint over it (PA Haystack), then I applied a coat of translucent yellow paint (Zesty Zinc) on the whole board. I set my stencil at the same place again and added a bit of Claret (another translucent paint) over the splatters. A second coat (very rapid with the leftovers) of Zesty Zinc was applied at the end to enforce the shine of the board, and I also glued on the edges a bit of Lime Green Glitter Stickles.

For the ice creams, I played with several acrylic chalk paints and inks to colour them. I used PA Vanilla, Rose, Limelight, Chocolate Pudding, Orchid, Lilac and Eggplant, and a tiny drop of Dylusions Bubblegum Pink ink (the great flashy pink colour!) and Fresh Lime over Limelight (giving this yummy shiny Green). For the final touch I also added a bit of Glam Pink Stickles and 3D brown paint to create small chocolate chips. Slightly sanded the brown strips also to finish...

You probably don't have all these paints, but you can easily adapt and use any paint or ink you have in your stash... Hope you like a bit this card funny and nonpretentious! :o)

Add-on: April, the 14th:I've just found out (thanks to Corrie!) that Art Impressions also do Challenges... The current one #133 is about "best of friends", and my four ladies seem to be the very best friends of the world, aren't they?... So, although I did not my card specifically for the challenge, I'd love to enter this into the fun and share it on the blog if not too late! :)

Hope you have a wonderful time at Version Scrap... for a while I was planning to come over for it, but it's not going to happen this year, and now I'm even sadder because we could have met - maybe next time?
Alison xx

Totally brilliant, and I love it! I have often though how cool it would be to be able to purchase "both sides" of an image (both looking away and looking toward you), and that is exactly what you have here. Your card is pure genius, Coco! Truly!

What a fabulous card! I love the colorful splats from the stencil, they made me think of the ice cream splattering from the ladies crowding in to get them! I love how the image on the front matches with the inside image so very clever! And the ice creams inside were perfect too! ~Diane

Sweet Sweet cards. The ice cream theme is nice to see while the weather is still cool here. Lovely coloring on your images and the splats was a clever idea! Thanks for playing along with us this week in our Anything Goes Challenge at Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge.